in refinement, can never be
accepted as the works of a master.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 111: The Dutch are not, however, to be entirely blamed for
repulsive scenes on the stage. Shakspeare's Titus Andronicus, and many
of the dramas of our Elizabethan writers, exhibit cruelties very
repulsive to modern ideas. The French stage has occasionally exhibited
in modern times scenes that have been afterwards condemned by the
censors; and in Italy the "people's theatre" occasionally panders to
popular tastes by execution scenes, where the criminal is merely taken
off the stage; the blow struck on a wooden block, to give reality to the
action; and the executioner re-enters flourishing a bloody axe.]

[Footnote 112: Ned Shuter was the comedian who first introduced a donkey
on the stage. Seated on the beast he delivered a prologue written on the
occasion of his benefit. Sometimes the donkey wore a great tie-wig.
Animals educated to play certain parts are a later invention. Horses,
dogs, and elephants have been thus trained in the present century, and
plays written expressly to show their proficiency.]

THE PRODUCTIONS OF THE MIND NOT SEIZABLE BY CREDITORS.

When Crebillon, the French tragic poet, published his Catiline, it was
attended with an honour to literature, which though it is probably
forgotten, for it was only registered, I think, as the news of the day,
it becomes one zealous in the cause of literature to preserve. I give
the circumstance, the petition, and the decree.

At the time Catiline was given to the public, the creditors of the poet
had the cruelty to attach the produce of this piece, as well at the
bookseller's, who had printed the tragedy, as at the theatre where it
was performed. The poet, irritated at these proceedings, addressed a
petition to the king, in which he showed "that it was a thing yet
unknown, that it should be allowed to class amongst seizable effects the
productions of the human mind; that if such a practice was permitted,
those who had consecrated their vigils to the studies of literature, and
who had made the greatest efforts to render themselves, by this means,
useful to their country, would see themselves placed in the cruel
predicament of not venturing to publish works, often precious and
interesting to the state; that the greater part of those who devote
themselves to literature require for the first wants of life those aids
which they have a right to expect from their labours